Friday, December 30, 2016

According
to a report in
the December 29 Western Producer,National Steel Car has been selected
to provide the new grain hoppers that will replace Canada’s aging cylindrical hopper
fleet.

The
new cars are 55 feet, eight inches long, have a volume of 5,431 cubic feet, and
weigh 60,000 pounds.

Current
hopper cars are 60 feet long and have a volume of 4,550 cubic feet. They weigh
62,000 pounds.

The
new cars are able to carry 20 percent more grain, or ten tonnes, than the older
cars.

Also,
because they are shorter, there can be more cars on each train.

Today
there are 22,400 of the older cylindrical grain hoppers in service. Of that
total, 8,400 are owned by the Canadian government and 3,100 by the governments
of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The rest are former Canadian Wheat Board cars.

All
the cars will reach the end of their service lives between 2022 and 2027.

In
other grain hopper car news, CPR president Keith Creel says that current unit grain
hopper train length will be increased from 112 cars to 134 cars.

Monday, December 19, 2016

(Time for the annual Christmas and model trains post! This time, a repeat from a year ago.)

Trains and Christmas have gone together for a long time, whether it’s a model
train around the Christmas tree or a department store Christmas display.

But model trains, Christmas gardens and fire departments also go
together in some U.S. east coast communities, as I recently discovered.

Ellicott City, MD

It goes back to the 19th
century, when Moravian immigrants that settled in Pennsylvania and
Maryland brought along with them the custom of creating an indoor miniature
garden to tell the story of the Nativity.

Thesse gardens,
called a “putz” (pronounced “pootz”), would include people, animals, buildings,
and landscaping.

Wise Ave. train garden

Locals who saw the
Moravian gardens began putting them under their Christmastrees. Later, they added
trains to the scenes.

Since not everyone
was rich enough to afford a garden in their home, firehouses began creating and
displaying train gardens so everyone in the community could experience them—a tradition
that is still practiced in some firehouses in those states.

Baltimore Fire Museum

One city where the
trains gardens are likely to be found is Baltimore, where they can be found in
homes, firehouses and businesses. Other communities also have them.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

For lots of model railroaders, that's where their interest in the hobby started: With a train set under the tree.

But good train sets were hard to find in the 1990s when Boris Polakow, Vice President of Canadian Sales Development for Loblaws (owner of Real Canadian Superstore), decided it was time for a quality, affordable train set.

Polakow, who had been fascinated by trains since a child, was distressed to see families bring low-quality train sets that broke “a day after Christmas,” as he told me in an interview in 2001.

He thought that if someone sold a high-quality train set at an affordable price, people would buy them. His colleagues at Loblaws weren’t so sure.

In 1992, Polakow proved them wrong.

The first run of 10,000 President’s Choice/PC Express (named after the line of Loblaw’s food products) train sets sold out within days of being released before Christmas, that year—and a tradition was started.

The first set, 1992.

Between 1992 and 2006, a total of 11 sets were released (they skipped 1996, 2000, 2003 and 2004).

The rolling stock was toy-like—the cars had truck-mounted horn-hook couplers, and many featured President’s Choice products like cookies, cola, juice, pizza and detergent, among other things.

The locomotives, on the other hand, were pretty good—especially the steamers. (All but two of the sets featured steam locomotives.)

Manufactured by Mehano in the former Yugoslavia, the units weren't always true to the prototype (e.g. a CPR Camelback, or the wrong tenders), and had only basic details.

And yet, they were smooth runners; some modelers bought the sets, priced at between $80-$100, just for the locomotives.

A few used them as starting points for super-detailing and kitbashing projects (see Canadian Railway Modeller Train 6, Track 6 and Train 7, Track 1.)

Of note was the company's model of the CNR's 6060-series U-1-f 4-8-2. It was not an exact replica of that famous bullet nose unit, but it was notable for being the first-ever attempt by a manufacturer to reproduce that locomotive's conical nose in plastic.

The PC Express Bullet Nose 6060

One thing that Polakow didn’t expect was that the sets would become collectors items; many people who bought them never took them out of the box, keeping them as collectibles.

Sets can still be found advertised as unopened on online auction sites.

I never bought a President's Choice train set. But in 2012 Canadian Railway Modeller editor Morgan Turney brought a 2-6-0 Mogul locomotive from set #2 over to run on the M & M Sub.

He had recently acquired the unit, and wanted to see it run. I gladly obliged—I rarely run steam on my early-1990s layout. It ran great, and looked good, too, as the photos at top and below attest.

So, at Christmastime, we can remember a tradition now sadly gone, and acknowledge and thank Boris for his contribution to the hobby--for his dream of making quality, affordable train sets for Canadian families.

About Me

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